A Review of Child Bite's Negative Noise

Lately, I have been deep in the bowels of Detroit’s music scene. From Techno to Punk Rock, Detroit has always been a staple of raw heartfelt opinionated emotional statements about what is happening in our modern society and the harmony of the human struggles. This city is a birthplace for progressive and substantially talented musicians. It’s also an incredibly hard city to love just like the complex and experimentally weird Punk Rock band, Child Bite.

Ceci estnon seulementune critique de livre

*Author's Note:Sylvan prefers to use gender-neutral pronouns (they/them/their), hence why I'm exclusively using them in this piece

In recent months, Jade Sylvan has become one of my favorite rising figures in the literary world. A genderqueer* poet, playwright, actor, performing artist, and producer, Sylvan has been called a “risque queer icon” by the Boston Globe and has written for publications like Buzzfeed,The Washington Post, and more. I first discovered Sylvan through the Cambridge Writers’ Workshop, reading one of their essays for a project with the group. Immediately, I was smitten, and I knew I had to expose myself to their work. Unfortunately, since I can’t travel to Boston to see the apocalyptic fringe lesbian sci-fi burlesque horror musical they wrote and produced (Spider Cult: The Musical, with shows on June 24 and 26), I managed to find their 2013 memoir, Kissing Oscar Wilde.

No Plus One Kicks Singlism In The Butt

Do you want to make the absolute best out of being single? No Plus One by Steph Young and Jill Dickman can help you master this art in a matter of simple steps. In my opinion, the official site was accurate in its claim that this book is, in fact, "the ultimate manual for living an amazing single life." just might be one of the best investments you could ever make. The Facebook like page summarizes the book a guide on "how to take risks, keep your standards high, get over an ex, and deal with bad dating advice." Buy it now or forever regret missing out on your singleness.

​Shifting Poles

​Welcome to the Apocalypse. Armageddon spills across the sky in the form of a hazy mushroom cloud. This is the Day of Death. A thousand brutal cuts to the atmosphere- caused by blind fools serving principalities of power that have gone wickedly askew- bleed the wound until it weeps its disgust downward upon the world. We are the inheritors of the polluted filth. Strewn outward from the recesses of abysmal failure. A despondent organic machine in deepening decline. Earth coughing, hacking, and wheezing for fresh air, gasping as the tar-blackened lungs desperately seek the oxygen of which they’ve been starved. A cancer spreads until it kills the host. Parasitic relationship unto the grave.

Hope and Try to be Human: How to be an American in London These Days

Over the last week I’ve been writing two pieces about hatred and hope in the wake of the Orlando shooting and the murder of MP Jo Cox. Neither of those seem helpful today, in the light of yet another dark twist in the political fabric of western societies.

As an American resident (but not naturalised citizen) of the UK, the first few hours of today (Friday the 24th of June) has been thoroughly surreal. The last two days in London have been heavy and grey with thunderstorms; widespread flooding has taken place. This morning, the skies are blue and sunny. The shouts of children allowed to play outside at the primary school next door are loud and, it would seem, largely oblivious to the state of European (or World) politics. This is comforting.

Overnight, the votes of the UK’s referendum on whether or not to remain part of the European Union were counted. The ‘Leave’ vote won at 52% to ‘Remain’s’ 48%. Those voting Leave were overwhelmingly older, white, rural or suburban, middle-to-lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum. (UK writers refer to this as ‘working class’, which to my American ears, allergic to class designations, always sounds like something of an epithet.) Younger people, those living in urban areas, those with connections or investments, those feeling less disenfranchised by the current political systems at home and abroad—those are the people who (mostly) voted Remain.

Overnight, as predicted, the British Pound fell to its lowest value since 1985. The most common word on the radio this morning has been ‘instability’.

Overnight, the Prime Minister, David Cameron, decided to resign.

Overnight, far-right cohorts in a number of other European countries began their calls for their own referendums of leaving the EU.

Overnight—it is difficult to feel any other way—hatred (this time, the xenophobic kind) had another tiny victory over hope.

​Mono is Stupid

After thinking I was just loaded down from stress, I finally just went to the doctor because I felt kinda horrible. The first time I went they assumed I had strep and sent me home with giant antibiotic pills I had to cut into fourths because they were SO DAMN HUGE. Also, if you left them too long in your mouth (swallowing pills was kind of hard with horribly swollen tonsils), they tasted like what my friend describes as an “acidic asshole.”

How I Know Radical Leftist Gun Nuts Are Real

It's taken me over a decade to face the fact that guns might not be in the best interest of the people. One of the biggest misunderstandings people have is that the more left-leaning your opinions tend to be, the more anti-gun you likely are. When people think of radical leftists, they typically think of people whose final agenda is to banish guns off of the face of existence.

That assumption couldn't be more false. The truth is that pro-gun radical leftists are very real and far more numerous than people might assume. I've seen more radical communities filled with pro-gun anarchists, socialists, and communists than I could ever begin to count. When I first started getting into radicalism, the online radical left community's gun fixation sort of gave me the chills.

Airplane

I’ve been on more airplanes than anyone else in my class. I’m the girl who misses school the first and last week of every semester, who starts her vacations early and returns to school late. I’m the girl who travels to America two times a year.

Silent and Speaking: What Can Allies Do in the Wake of a Massacre?

In the wreckage of the Pulse massacre, there’s a lot being said about LGBTQIA pride, about standing up in the face of violence. About the great value of being oneself, publicly and without shame. And I love that. Nothing nullifies intimidation tactics like the refusal to be intimidated. Many of us have endured years of a quieter violence, being told that we are broken, evil, or crazy, and so our pride is radical act of love. As a bisexual woman married to a man, I could easily pass as straight, opt out of the conversation, and hide the target on my back. But I won’t do it. I’ll make a point to say “I’m with them.”

​Aroma Victoriana

Often we associate the Victorian Era with a degree of primness that falls helplessly into parody — nowhere better illustrated than in Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest(1895) — but as with all eras, the Victorian presents a dark underbelly as well as a laced-up exterior. I shan't elaborate on the entirety of this dichotomy, but content myself with the extremities of Victorian perfumery, from the nosegay to the nether regions of the civet, and from the ancient coaxing of flowers by enfleurage to the explosive manipulations of chemical compounds.